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Dessert

Cheeky Dumplings

Cheeky Dumplings are small pastry squares filled with stoned cherries and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheeky Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Rub the lard into the flour mixture until crumbly.

  4. Add the milk and mix until a dough forms.

  5. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into squares.

Fill and bake

  1. Place 2 spoonfuls of stoned cherries in the center of each square.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the cherries, then fold the edges of the dough over and pinch to seal.

  3. Place the dumplings on a floured baking pan with the sealed edges facing down.

  4. Bake until golden and cooked through, about 20-25 minutes.

  5. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to make the dough tender and flaky.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the dumplings rise and lighten.
Stoned cherries
Provide the filling, releasing juices that add moisture and tartness.

The step that matters

Sealing the dumplings. If the edges are not pinched shut firmly, juice from the cherries can leak out during baking and leave the dumplings dry and the filling thin. Sealed edges facing down also help keep the filling contained as the dough sets.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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